This time last week, the polls predicted that – by a narrow margin – Harris would win the US election. They got it wrong. Instead, we’ve seen Trump win both the electoral college and popular vote.

It’s important to note, that whilst many are pinning this as historic victory for Trump, Harris only needed a 1 percentage point swing in the three key rust-belt states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to win the electoral college. The election was close. Democrat voters should not spiral into a state of despair – they should take this moment to reflect and rebuild.

So, how can we better understand the people who voted to re-elect Trump. With the lens of hindsight, perhaps we can expose the blind-spots and biases that skewed predictions?

Firstly, the left has (perhaps wrongly) tended to focus on identity politics – assuming that if you are a woman, if you have a migration background, if you are an ethnic minority – you will vote Democrat. Because especially when the alternative is a candidate like Trump, how could you not? Firstly, this assumption is damaging because leaders should never take voters for granted, they should try to understand and win-over each group, each election. Secondly, it is harmful because it wrongly assumes that identity is the most salient factor driving voting behaviour, and clearly, it is not.

While many expected the Democrats to win a landslide victory among women, the vote was split – 54% voted for Harris and 44% for Trump. Surprisingly, the exit polls show that Harris actually did worse with women than Biden, who won 57% of the female vote back in 2020. Whilst many assumed that Harris’ campaign, which focused on protecting women’s autonomy over their bodies, would do well with women – many appeared to feel boxed-in by the assumption that reproductive rights would be their top-priority. Indeed, one survey found that just 13% of women cited abortion as the most important issue determining their vote, significantly less than the 36% who said inflation and rising household expenses were the biggest factor. Ultimately, in voting for Trump, women said: ‘we are not single-issue voters’.

Trump also did surprisingly well with Hispanic and Latino communities, winning a significant minority of their vote (45%). There are several potential reasons for this. Whilst Trump has made countless remarks promising to seal the Southern border to stop the arrival of ‘illegal aliens’, it is important to understand that the Hispanic/Latino population do not necessarily feel threatened by these remarks. Of course, the vast majority of Latino or Hispanic people arrived in the US legally and have lived there for many years, they take pride in being integrated in society as US citizens and may themselves be concerned about unregulated immigration. Additionally, as was the case for women, this community do not vote as an identity-based bloc. There is a significant community of Hispanic and Latino people whose beliefs are aligned with the Republican party’s social conservatism and economic values, who above everything else- are concerned about economic issues.

Across the board, it seems that voting behaviour was primarily driven by people’s lived experience of the economy. While the US economy has overall performed well under Biden – especially when compared to other G7 nations – on a personal level people have seen their wages grow more slowly than inflation. What this means is that when people receive their pay checks at the end of the month, they can’t buy as much as when Trump was president. As a result, when Trump asked voters to compare their lives now to four years ago, many concluded that he was the better choice.

It’s important to note that inflation wasn’t necessarily Biden’s fault – economies in the UK, Germany and France have been experiencing the same trends, and incumbent leaders in these countries have been facing similar struggles. Indeed, while Trump’s policies could be considered more inflationary – we need to understand that when voters arrived at the election booth, they were not thinking about a comparative analysis of economic policy, they were thinking about the fact that under Democrat leadership they’ve been struggling to afford their weekly groceries. Where people are struggling with a rising cost of living, they are voting for change.

Finally, we might better understand the election results by turning to psychology, by reflecting on the ‘national mood’ and understanding the role emotions play in determining voting behaviour. Indeed, while mainstream analysis on the rise of populism focuses on many of the above cultural and economic factors, recent research has uncovered emotion as a strong predictive factor. This global study found that feelings of fear and anger, depression and sadness are predictive of populist beliefs, having a traceable impact on voting behaviour at-scale. Ultimately, where unhappiness is on the rise – populist stories are ringing true with disaffected people. Importantly, Trump has harnessed these feelings of fear and anger, he has spoken to those who are feeling depressed and detached- effectively galvanising their support.

To better-understand voting behaviours, we need to incorporate emotion in our analysis, we need to understand voters as people with diverse interests and we need to understand the everyday challenges they face. When we analyse the results, we should understand that those who have left the Democratic party, are those who feel left behind. The solution urgently demands an engaging movement of change that brings everyone along.